


Bee-Loathed

by RainofLittleFishes



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Badass Protective Sollux is so sick of your shit, Bees, Captor family, Cronus is a jerk - won't someone please try to fix him, Deliberately instigating a panic attack or something like it, Discipline, Everyone Is Alive, Kink Meme, Non-Consensual Touching, Panic Attacks, Post-Game, Power Imbalance, The bees don't like you either, hurt/comfort - sorta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 08:42:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3321050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainofLittleFishes/pseuds/RainofLittleFishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sollux is tired of Cronus harassing Mituna. When the seadweller invades his turf looking for his favorite victim, Sollux decides to teach him a lesson. With bees. Mind the tags.</p><p>There are bees in your gills. Oh gods, you’re going to die. You can feel the vibration and tickle of multiple feet and wings and tiny armed bodies <em>inside</em> your very delicate internal-external respiratory organs and mini-Mituna is talking but his voice is just a drone because there are <strong><em><span class="u">BEES IN YOUR GILLS AND YOU’RE GOING TO DIE</span></em></strong>.</p><p>Inspired by, though not precisely in compliance with, kink meme XXp91: Captor spades Ampora, torture by bees</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bee-Loathed

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chelonianmobile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chelonianmobile/gifts).



There are bees in your gills. Oh gods, you’re going to die. You can feel the vibration and tickle of multiple feet and wings and tiny armed bodies _inside_ your very delicate internal-external respiratory organs and mini-Mituna is talking but his voice is just a drone because there are **_BEES IN YOUR GILLS AND YOU’RE GOING TO DIE_**.

Your breath is speeding up and you try to slow down because if you hyperventilate your opercula will slam shut and the bees will be trapped and they haven’t started stinging yet but you know that there’s no way they won’t if you start to panic. They can smell fear. You are _terrified_.

You feel a sudden full body pressure and there’s a sensation like wind and your back impacts against a wall. Your gills slam shut and you quickly force them open because you can already hear the tone of the buzzing in your insides change, they’re peeved, and they haven’t started stinging yet, but they also haven’t left. What if they start nesting in there. Oh gods. Whatever you did, you’re _sorry_.

Your gills ache from the air, they aren’t meant to be kept open and they’re drying out as the minutes tick by and the tiny stingbeasts track through your innards leaving who knows what behind. The muscles of your opercula ache, they aren’t meant to hold your gills open like this and the momentary closure relieved some of the ache but mostly just reminded you how much it _hurts_.

“Look at me!”

You force your eyes open, you hadn’t realized they were shut, there’s a tickle of tiny feet tapping along your neck and your neck gills are firmly shut but there’s a bee trying to pry under your opercula, and mini-Mituna is short, maybe chest high, but he’s sharp, sharp like Mituna used to be, and if you weren’t terrified for your (second) life, you’d be pitch flirting like a cuttlefish attack because you’d normally want that attention on you, _but you just want the bees to be gone_.

“Cronuth Ampora, you bucket of thit. We are going to dithcuth perthonal boundarieth.”

You’re pretty sure that’s what he said, what he said when this all started when you innocently invaded his turf searching for Mituna and he reacted like you were trying to pap his palemate. You can’t even laugh at his lisp. His eyes are blazing suns and his hair is cut militant short and he’s scrawny compared to Mituna but there’s something wiry and hard about him that your favorite fuckup has never had.

The bee on your neck stops tapping and stings you and your neck gills flare in surprise and it dives inside. You whine and your sinuses and nose and throat are all filling with snot or phlegm and you’re panting through your teeth, terrified that the bees will try to explore new orifices. There’s one in your left ear now and you don’t know how far it will get before it starts to chew. They’re small but not that small.

You don’t know how they all got as far in as they did, one moment you just barged in and the next you were swarmed, and somewhere in the process the resident psionic shredded your shirt. There’s several more in your neck gills now and if enough of them sting you there, you’re dead, your windpipe will just swell shut and you’ll just keel over, drowning on dry land.

“FithFuck! Pay Attention!”

You snap your eyes back open, you don’t know when they closed, the sting spot on your neck burns, and the ache in each of your straining muscles promises more of the same as the bees inevitably repeat it. You feel a pressure across your chest and you realize he still has you pinned up against the wall, one hand waving the pressure higher until your ribs creak and he releases it back to the previous level, you force your head back up so he can see your eyes are open, you’re listening, you’re obeying him, you’ll do anything so long as he calls them off. You really, really hope he can call them off.

“Are you lithening?” You nod, barely, you don’t want to agitate the bee inching its way back out of your left ear. His eyes are so bright, it hurts to look at him.

“Anther with wordth.”

“Yes. I’m listening, please, stop, please don’t hurt me, I’m sorry, shit I’m sorry.” The words come tumbling out and they start soft but they get louder, and you’re panting, you ache everywhere and you’ve never before been ashamed to be a healthy young troll in his prime, but you can’t believe your nook and bulge are both responding to imminent death with ‘yes, please’. You’re going to die and the bees will nest in your body and everyone will come and laugh at you with your shameful puddled festering corpse and terror pheromones.

A bee lands on your lips and you snap your mouth shut. It taps its behind on your sealed lips the way the one on your neck did just before it stung you to get its way, and you whine and feel tears squeeze out and roll down your cheeks. You force your eyes back open in time to catch him flick a finger. The bee on your lips crawls up and sips at you tears instead. The one in your left ear takes flight and then the ones in your neck gills and in a moment there are half a dozen on your cheeks, sipping their way back up to your eyes.

“Please,” you breathe, just loud enough to be a word and not a shape.

He waves a hand again and the bees on your face launch and you flinch, but they don’t return. There are still bees in your gills, but they start to back out, launch, fly away until there’s still an omnipresent buzz in the air down to your bones but you are once again alone in your skin.

You gasp and your opercula slam shut and flutter open and you think at least one has bent so far it’s popped open and you can hear a little whistle as you breathe, faster and faster. He’s still holding you against the wall, his power a giant invisible hand, a nest of tentacles, a firm unyielding pressure as unnegotiable as gravity. You can still feel the steady itching creep of lubrication creeping its traitorous way down your thighs. You gasp until you can feel black edging around your vision and you close your eyes. You’d curl up if you could but you’re still pinned to the wall.

Time passes and you don’t know how long it is that you just rasp and gasp and sob, pinned by psionics and that burning stare. You feel a little pressure against the bent operculum and you flinch, sure that it’s the bees again. There’s a bit more pressure on it and it pops back into place. You feel the pressure pinning you to the wall ease, gradually, so you mostly have time to get your knees ready to support your weight.

There’s another prod, this time to your shoulder, and when it comes again you get that he wants you to move. You let him direct you until you find the back of your knees pressing against the couch and you crumble. Absently you notice that the buzz is almost quiet now. Something soft lands on your head, tangles in your horns, and you bat yourself free until you can identify it as a blanket and you wrap it around yourself, shiver, and wonder what his game is. A box assaults you and you raise a hand to fend it off and find disposable facial hygiene tissues. You take a tissue and it’s the greatest puzzling artifact of the centasweep. Finally, voluntarily, you look at him. What kind of game is he playing?

“Clean yourthelf up, you thelfith wreck.” You can’t read anything in his face. He’s sitting in his rolling chair, arms at rest on the chair arms, one leg crossed over the other, utterly in command.

You blow your nose and wipe your face and rub your ears and neck and face as if you could rub off the sensation of touch. You feel itchy all over and you think that your belowdecks are only starting to settle because this is flipping from past-pitch to almost pale so fast you’re freeze-dried in the whiplash.

You don’t think it’s actually pale, but you don’t care as long as the bees don’t come back. If he wants to pap you or fondle your horns or gills or tell you what a mess you are until you fix it, you’ll let him. If he wants to _anything_ , you’d let him right now, as long as there are no bees. You reach for another tissue and your hand is trembling. You drop it into your lap and drain your sinuses at the back of your mouth and swallow the phlegm down instead.

“You done?” His voice doesn’t give you any clues as to if he thinks you ought to be done.

You nod and then remember, look up, say, “Yes.”

It feels like you should be appending it with ‘Sir’, like your strictest schoolfeeding instructor lecturing you about your future responsibilities as a culler, ‘Pay attention, Ampora, you may have the option to be a failure of a culler but your cullees will not have an alternative.’ You used to hate her so much. You didn’t want responsibility. You didn’t know what you wanted but you knew that much.

Captor-the-smaller, Captor-the-more-badass, Sollux Captor who has utterly dismantled you and hasn’t hurried you yet about putting yourself back together, he asks you a question and it hits you like a grenade.

“How doeth it feel to be touched againtht your will?”

You can’t help it, you curl up then, like you’ve taken a wound to the belly and are trying to hold in your guts. You wrap your arms around your knees and you duck your head down and you just sob. You’re not even sure why. It hurt, but the terror was worse, the confusion, not knowing what he wanted, how to extract yourself. It hurt, but you’re fine now. You cry until you hiccup and a glass of water bumps your hand like it fetched itself. You hold it, take a drink, look up again, and he’s still staring at you, twin sun gaze and emotionless face, no softness, no anger.

“Anther with wordth, Cronuth,” he prompts.

“It hurts. And it’s… it’s bad. Scary. Not right.” You snap your mouth shut then. You not only sound like a wiggler, you just criticized him. The drone of bees, which had faded into the background for you, is suddenly obvious again. You force yourself to look up again, and he doesn’t look mad. He twitches one side of his mouth up in a not-smile, a grimace, an expression of shared discontent.

“Then why do you do it to Mituna?”

Oh. OH. You… you never thought that it felt like that. An arm across the shoulder or around the ribs, it’s not the same as **_IMPENDING-DEATH-BY-BEES_**. Sure Mituna gets worked up, but you like it when he spits fire back at you, it’s almost like the before-Mituna. Sure most of the time you don’t get before-Mituna, just spastic-Mituna, but it’s worth it for the sometimes. Right? You don’t think that that’s the right answer, or at least, not the answer Sollux wants. You don’t think he’ll bring the bees back, but you don’t know what he wants, don’t know what he gets out of this. Is he just telling you to leave Mituna alone? You can do that, you can definitely do that if it means a lifetime moratorium on bee attacks. But if that’s all he wants, why hasn’t he said so and kicked you out already?

“W-what do you w-want?” You had thought you had gotten rid of your stutter, at least smoothed it out into a prime piece of seadweller seduction, but the hiccups are still periodically shaking you and the water has only not jumped out of the glass because you finished most of it and it’s currently balanced in midair again.

“I want you to tell me, in wordth, why the hell you keep harathing Mituna when you know he doethn’t like it and you know he wanth you to thtop.”

“I don’t know!” Maybe you don’t know and maybe do know and you don’t want to think about it. Because thinking that all you need to do to get old Mituna back is surprise new Mituna sufficiently is pretty stupid and absolutely not what you thought would happen. Maybe what you hoped would happen, but hope is stupid and even you know that ain’t happening. Maybe you were jealous of Mituna. Even half-broken he’s still better than you according to everyone.

You don’t know what Sollux wants. If he just wants you to leave Mituna alone, why doesn’t he just say it? You sit there on his couch with the bees humming in the background, you in your adult-sized body wrapped in his stupid shitty warm blanket that smells like Cheezy Grub Curlz, your shirt in shreds somewhere on his floor, your breath still catching with a wet sound, your mind sure that at any moment BEES. You breathe for a few minutes, head down, and if he wants you to look him in the eye, he doesn’t make you, so clearly he doesn’t.

“Okay, if thath how you want to do thith, we can leave out the thitty thelf-inthpection for now. Here’th what we’re going to do, what you’re going to do. You are going to leave Mituna alone. Don’t touch him. Don’t talk to him. If he talkth to you, you can rethpond. No thtalking, no molethting, no taunting. The two of you are not in a quad. He doeth not owe you anything.”

Okay, you can do that. You nod, stop yourself, look up. “Yes, sir.” You didn’t mean to say the last part, but as it slips out, you don’t really not mean it either. He doesn’t react.

“Next week, you will come back here, at the thame time, and we will dithcuth how you did. And the week after that. And again and again until you can be truthted to control yourthelf.”

Your eyes widen. That sounds, almost pale? Maybe ash? Evidently Sollux can now read minds.

“Thith ith not pale. You can conthider me your parole offither. You have been found guilty of all chargeth, including being a thelfith thupid wiggler and a general menathe to thothiety.”

Okay, you can survive that, even with all the lisping, maybe someone should be there to tell you off when you’re hitting the limits of everyone’s patience. Except that no one seems to have much patience for you at any time, they just want you gone. It’s not a quad, but if he’s offering to take you on as a project or something, at least someone would notice if you were gone. There’s just one more thing…

“Will there be bees?”

“Of fucking courthe there are beeth.” You feel your heart almost seize before he gets to the rest of his sentence, there’s a ringing in your ears and you almost don’t hear it.

“But I’m not wathting my beeth on you. They attacked you becauthe you were trethpathing and becauthe they recognithed your thcent ath thomething that maketh Mituna upthet. You’re lucky I wath here to control them. Don’t come in here uninvited, knock firtht.”

Your heart still thunders inside the hollow space of your ribs. You don’t know if it’s better or worse that he didn’t initiate it.

“Does it… really?”

“I don’t thpeak wiggler. Doeth it really what?”

“Is that really what it feels like for Mituna?”

“Not precithely, but clothe enough.”

“Close how?”

“You tell me why you kept bothering him when you knew you thouldn’t and maybe we can talk about Mituna later. I think you need to focuth on fithing yourthelf before you go poking your nub into everyone elth.”

He waits, staring at you, and one eyebrow rises over his glasses until you get what he wants. You’re not sure you get why the rest of it, but you understand this much.

“Yes. Yes, sir.”

The brow lowers and he spares you a soft ‘good’ and you’re not sure why you suddenly feel warm and better. An endless stretch of minutes ago you would have done anything to be elsewhere, as far away as possible. Now? You fall asleep so swiftly you don’t notice the water glass zoom away or the bees that zoom over to confer with Sollux, or that he spares them a soft ‘good’ as well before he rolls his chair back over to his workstation and starts to code again.

You’re going to wake up snotty and congested and a saltwater bath won’t be enough to prevent your gills from going through a premature sloughing cycle, and you still won’t know that computing bees certainly don’t attack so extensively without authorization, but you’re also going to be on your very best behavior because if you don’t mess up, he might listen to you in a week. In a week he might even spare you a soft ‘good’. 


End file.
